The wind is a big a part of life on the islands: as winter approaches, all the pieces that may blow away is faraway from yards -— wheelbarrows, garden mowers, picket benches. When the lighthouse keeper nonetheless lived on the Eshaness (a lighthouse on the northwest of the principle island — there are upward of 34 lighthouses on the islands), our information informed us, he used to chain his automotive to the cliff to verify it didn’t blow away. There aren’t many bushes in Shetland, because of this — the identical purpose we got for why native Shetland ponies and sheep are so diminutive.

In the winter, there’s a month of near-perpetual darkness, and in the summertime, a month of steady daylight; the wind, I used to be informed, is fixed regardless of the time of 12 months, although at sure instances it’s recognized to gust more durable, stronger, or kind of predictably (in September, the month I used to be there, the winds are often known as “the Equinox gales”).

The folks of Shetland, although, actually couldn’t be nicer — one is tempted to suppose their isolation and hardiness has shaped them for kindness. At the bed-and-breakfast the place we stayed, Virdafjell, the proprietor, Dorothy Stove, greeted us with a plastic bin of unpolluted home slippers for us to select from, and each morning put out a breakfast unfold match for 10 hungry males (although my good friend and I have been the one folks there): scones, assorted bread, eggs, yogurt, fruit, no less than 10 totally different sorts of cereal, and even ornamental butter slices in a superbly sized dish.

Considering the scale of Shetland, Wool Week is extremely huge and various. The program is eight full days, and every day options myriad lessons and exhibitions, excursions, gatherings, teas and lectures on practically all the islands; on a random day, I counted 54 totally different choices.